About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the future of humanity.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/june-is-men-s-health-month/
Jun 01, 2012...
Anchored by a Congressional health education program, Men’s Health Month aims to heighten awareness of preventable health problems and encourage early detection and treatment of disease.
The broad-ranging research of Weizmann Institute scientists addresses multiple areas of men’s health, including fighting cancers that are common to men. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Every year, cancer claims the lives of nearly 300,000 men in America.” Weizmann research, such as a method for timely detection of prostate cancer, can help protect our fathers, brothers, husbands, friends. Read on for just a few examples of how Institute science is benefitting men’s health.
Jul 01, 2012...
Reproduction—perhaps the most basic impulse of all living creatures—is also among the most complex and intricate of all human processes, requiring the precise coordination of many biological systems. This becomes most evident when things go wrong. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in the U.S. alone there are more than seven million women with an impaired ability to have children.
Difficulty conceiving can be due to age, stress, health, or any number and combination of factors, many of which come into play as more women wait until later in life to have children. Often such women turn to invasive, expensive procedures to induce pregnancy—procedures that frequently fail and that, even when successful, can cause a host of health problems for the women and children both.
Jul 15, 2013...
Scientists have found that very high levels of stress in the mother can also overwhelm the barrier enzyme in the placenta, allowing the stress hormone cortisol to cross into the foetus’s brain. Photo: PA
Researchers have discovered a key component of the placenta that normally protects unborn babies from high levels of hormones that build up in their mothers’ blood when she is stressed.
In some mothers, however, this protective element can be faulty, allowing the foetus to be exposed to stress hormones and leaving a child more prone to anxiety and depression in later life.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-july-2014/
Jul 28, 2014... Using the body’s natural virus killers to prevent and treat HIV infection has been problematic until now because of the strong inflammatory response these molecules can stimulate as they get rid of the invaders. Now, collaborative research conducted by scientists at the Weizmann Institute and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated how suppressing the activity of these molecules – interferons – around the time of infection could have long-term implications for the course of the disease. Their research appeared in Nature.
Sep 29, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—September 29, 2020—The odors we give off are a sort of body language – one that may affect our relationships more than we realize. New research from the lab of Prof. Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science suggests that this “chemical communication” may extend to human reproduction as well. The study, which was published in eLife, found that women who suffer from a condition known as unexplained repeated pregnancy loss (uRPL) process messages concerning male body odor – especially their husband’s – in a different way than other women. These findings may point to new directions in the search for causes and prevention of this poorly understood disorder.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/does-the-nose-talk-to-the-womb/
Dec 08, 2020... To be an expectant mother, or the anxious partner of one, is to be keenly, even agonizingly aware of how chemicals affect a developing life. The basic advice is well known, and obsessively followed: Alcohol in strict moderation, and no nicotine at all. Don’t mess with mercury. Folic acid is your friend. More protein and less caffeine. Stay away from BPA, PBCs and PFA, and generally make an enemy of the unpronounceable.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/a-future-where-women-don-t-need-to-give-birth/
Feb 22, 2022...
In this fascinating video produced by the BBC, Prof. Jacob Hanna from Weizmann’s Department of Molecular Biology joins several global experts to discuss embryonic growth outside of the womb.
Hanna and his team made history by growing mouse embryos externally, and Hanna believes in the next ten years clinical trials in humans could be possible.
The potential impacts of growing human fetuses in a synthetic womb are wide-ranging, saving premature babies too underdeveloped for traditional incubators, preventing life-threatening pregnancy complications, and providing an opportunity for people who are unable to conceive for a variety of reasons, to have children.
Aug 01, 2022... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—August 1, 2022— An egg meets a sperm – that’s a necessary first step in life’s beginnings, and it’s also a common first step in embryonic development research. But in a Weizmann Institute of Science study published today in Cell, researchers have grown synthetic embryo models of mice outside the womb by starting solely with stem cells cultured in a petri dish – that is, without the use of fertilized eggs. The method opens new horizons for studying how stem cells form various organs in the developing embryo, and may one day make it possible to grow tissues and organs for transplantation using synthetic embryo models.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/nava-dekel-fruit-of-discovery/
May 31, 2015...
Some research changes lives; some research makes lives. Such is the case for the Kaman family of Toronto, who had an emotional meeting with the scientist and clinician whose fertility research led to a much-desired pregnancy - and the birth of their daughter Hannah in 2008.
In the late 1990s, Prof. Nava Dekel of the Department of Biological Regulation and clinicians at Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot made a serendipitous discovery that inflicting a slight injury to the lining of the uterus before women undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) dramatically increases the chances of a successful pregnancy. Since then, Prof. Dekel’s studies at the Weizmann Institute unveiled the mechanism of this beneficiary intervention and hundreds of fertility clinics worldwide have changed their IVF protocol accordingly. The result has been higher pregnancy success rates - and lots of babies who might otherwise not have been born.
Sep 05, 2023... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—September 6, 2023—A research team headed by Prof. Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science has created complete models of human embryos from stem cells cultured in the lab – and managed to grow them outside the womb up to day 14. As reported today in Nature, these synthetic embryo models had all the structures and compartments characteristic of this stage, including the placenta, yolk sac, chorionic sac and other external tissues that ensure dynamic and adequate growth.
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